Meta: The Philosophy of Poverty
You know that thing where the private eye's cases turn out to be related? Yeah, that thing again. Proximately, I'm riffing on cupidsbow's post "How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor" which is linked on metafandom if everyone on your flist hasn't already linked it. In broader terms, replying to the whole discussion "Fanfiction always and everywhere sucks"/"No it doesn't, necessarily."
Look, even if there weren't terrific writers doing fanworks, the precipitous departure of "Drive" points out why there always has been and always will be a need for samizdat forms that are under the radar and don't have official permission. TPTB are basically *always* some variety of Foxram & Hart, or at least, like the battle going to the strong, it's a good bet.
I think what DriveCrash shows us is that commercial media are becoming more and more blockbuster-driven. Nothing gets a chance to build an audience, and there's no accommodation of niche markets. And that's also the message of today's NY Times article about the migration of CD sales, to the extent anybody is still buying the damn things, to Wal-mart and other big box stores. Obviously Wal-mart won't carry anything politically controversial--they also won't carry anything that doesn't have the potential for huge immediate sales. Do you like klezmer, or old bluegrass recordings, or little-known musicals, or indeed anything except the most innocuous mainstream pop? Too bad. Maybe if you like classical music you'll be able to find some Mozart and Bach (especially since the works are public domain!) but contemporary classical music? Not so much.
And it's true that as creators of fanworks, we don't get paid, and indeed may be out money in terms of buying software or printing zines, in addition to the time we spend. OTOH, getting our fiction fix immediately for free instead of for $20-$30 plus zine publishing and delivery time has got to be worth something. I think that one way to look at the ambiguous copyright situation of fanfic is that what the copyright proprietor owns is not the right to think about the intellectual property, but the right to *profit* from it, which therefore is a value for working outside the cash nexus.
But after all one reason people even *want* money in the first place is to buy things to make themselves feel better, and to the extent that we enjoy participating in fandom* that satisfaction is valuable.
There are just too many things that are worth writing/drawing/vidding and worth reading/looking at that are never going to have a commercial mass audience. Sometimes it's because they're politically controversial, but often it's just because the audience is small. And that's one of the blessings of the Internet--material can be delivered on a one-to-one or one-to-(not very)many basis, affordably. The ability to send and receive these messages is incredibly precious to me.
And, replying to glossing (muttering into my Klutz bracelet: "Calling Klutz1! Come in, Klutz1!") yeah, there will always be a bigger audience for undemanding work than for demanding work. That doesn't mean that there's NO audience for demanding work, or that the people who appreciate it don't appreciate the hell out of it. As to whether it's worth doing, it's probably more satisfying to play at the top of your game than to keep doing things you could do with one toe.
NYC peeps: To my devastation, I am probably going to have to deliberately blow off a St. Agnes book sale, but for those of you who don't have a book ms. deadline on Monday, it's going to be this weekend: Friday and Saturday 11-5, Sunday noon to 5, St. Agnes branch of NY Public Library, on Amsterdam Avenue at 81st Street.
*Believe me, when the wank gets above collarbone level, or a story is going really badly, I realize that there's more immediate gratification to be obtained by dropping Olaf the Troll's hammer on your foot. Repeatedly.
Look, even if there weren't terrific writers doing fanworks, the precipitous departure of "Drive" points out why there always has been and always will be a need for samizdat forms that are under the radar and don't have official permission. TPTB are basically *always* some variety of Foxram & Hart, or at least, like the battle going to the strong, it's a good bet.
I think what DriveCrash shows us is that commercial media are becoming more and more blockbuster-driven. Nothing gets a chance to build an audience, and there's no accommodation of niche markets. And that's also the message of today's NY Times article about the migration of CD sales, to the extent anybody is still buying the damn things, to Wal-mart and other big box stores. Obviously Wal-mart won't carry anything politically controversial--they also won't carry anything that doesn't have the potential for huge immediate sales. Do you like klezmer, or old bluegrass recordings, or little-known musicals, or indeed anything except the most innocuous mainstream pop? Too bad. Maybe if you like classical music you'll be able to find some Mozart and Bach (especially since the works are public domain!) but contemporary classical music? Not so much.
And it's true that as creators of fanworks, we don't get paid, and indeed may be out money in terms of buying software or printing zines, in addition to the time we spend. OTOH, getting our fiction fix immediately for free instead of for $20-$30 plus zine publishing and delivery time has got to be worth something. I think that one way to look at the ambiguous copyright situation of fanfic is that what the copyright proprietor owns is not the right to think about the intellectual property, but the right to *profit* from it, which therefore is a value for working outside the cash nexus.
But after all one reason people even *want* money in the first place is to buy things to make themselves feel better, and to the extent that we enjoy participating in fandom* that satisfaction is valuable.
There are just too many things that are worth writing/drawing/vidding and worth reading/looking at that are never going to have a commercial mass audience. Sometimes it's because they're politically controversial, but often it's just because the audience is small. And that's one of the blessings of the Internet--material can be delivered on a one-to-one or one-to-(not very)many basis, affordably. The ability to send and receive these messages is incredibly precious to me.
And, replying to glossing (muttering into my Klutz bracelet: "Calling Klutz1! Come in, Klutz1!") yeah, there will always be a bigger audience for undemanding work than for demanding work. That doesn't mean that there's NO audience for demanding work, or that the people who appreciate it don't appreciate the hell out of it. As to whether it's worth doing, it's probably more satisfying to play at the top of your game than to keep doing things you could do with one toe.
NYC peeps: To my devastation, I am probably going to have to deliberately blow off a St. Agnes book sale, but for those of you who don't have a book ms. deadline on Monday, it's going to be this weekend: Friday and Saturday 11-5, Sunday noon to 5, St. Agnes branch of NY Public Library, on Amsterdam Avenue at 81st Street.
*Believe me, when the wank gets above collarbone level, or a story is going really badly, I realize that there's more immediate gratification to be obtained by dropping Olaf the Troll's hammer on your foot. Repeatedly.